Post-disaster agricultural transitions in Nepal

Abstract

In Spring 2015, a series of earthquakes and aftershocks struck Nepal. The earthquakes caused significant changes in labor and land availability, cash income needs, and land quality. We examine how these post-earthquake impacts converged with ongoing agricultural shifts. Earthquake-related socio-economic and landscape changes specifically motivate the adoption of cardamom, Amomum subulatum, a high-value ecologically beneficial, and low labor commercial crop. We investigate reasons for the increased interest in cardamom post-earthquake, and challenges associated with it. We find that adopting cardamom serves as an important post-disaster adaptation. However, more broadly, unevenly distributed interventions coupled with the high capital costs of agricultural transition exacerbate social differentiation in communities after the disaster. Adoption is often limited to economically better off smallholder farmers. This paper extends previous research on disasters and smallholder farming by highlighting the specific potential of disasters to accelerate agricultural transitions and resulting inequality from the changes.

Dalit’s livelihoods in Nepal: income sources and determinants

“…Khanal ( 2019 ) clearly stated that sharecropping is one strategy for Dalit households to meet their basic nutrition requirements. Intensification of such land is less likely because adoption of high value economic crops after the earthquake favoured better-off farmers (DiCarlo et al, 2018 ). Further, Dalit households who practice sharecropping may also have been excluded from non-farm economic opportunities (day labour, for example), as they have to perform domestic chores on the proprietors’ farms.…”

“…1 ) we used is a modification of Matin and Hulme ( 2003 ), which illustrated how poor households become ultra-poor after a disaster, and intervention types they may need in terms of post-disaster recovery plans. Investigating social vulnerability to earthquake-related income change is important in order to identify and disaggregate the poorest among the poor because disasters increase their vulnerability by damaging livelihood opportunities and access to existing services, marginalizing and disempowering them (DiCarlo et al, 2018 ; Hallegatte et al, 2020 ). For example, Lam and Kuipers ( 2019 ) found an exclusion of the poorest of the poor in the reconstruction and recovery process in Nepal.…”

Agroforestry for mountain development: Prospects, challenges and ways forward in Nepal

“…Such data on the Alnus species is essential for adaptive responses and preventive measures for the sustainable management of agroforestry tree species; however, there is a lack of data on the future distribution of the cardamom species. The queen of spices or black gold, the cardamom is the world‖s third-most expensive spice crop, which comprises 7% of agricultural exports from Nepal, and nearly 70% of the world market (cited in DiCarlo et al, 2018). Despite lower productivity compared to other countries, it fetches a higher price grown in the hilly region.…”

Understanding transitions in farming systems and their effects on livestock rearing and smallholder livelihoods in Telangana, India

“…Moreover, research on transitions in farming systems is largely focused on farm-level studies (Robinson et al 2015 ; Bui et al 2016 ; Gaitán-Cremaschi et al 2019 ). Regional studies of transitions by Dorward ( 2013 ), Jayne et al ( 2014 ), Pretty and Bharucha ( 2014 ), and DiCarlo et al ( 2018 ) reported how farming systems developed, how they interact during the transitions, and how the transition affected natural resource use. To our knowledge, there are no scientific publications about regional aspects of transitions in India.…”